Puzzle Pieces
by Sinister Tomato
Summary: Her own pieces were weak, like extremely thin rice paper. The two irregular pieces would never fit, but it was a comfort, not a curse.


**Disclaimer**: I don't own Samurai Champloo in any way shape or form, so please, don't sue. This is purely for entertainment purposes.

**A/N**: Fuu reflects on the effect her bodyguards have on her life. Short and to the point. Would appreciate a little constructive criticisim.

* * *

There truly was never a dull moment with Mugen and Jin. 

Moments filled with flashing blades, bandits, psychos, ignorant gangs of Yakuza, spies, cross dressers, the wrongly-accused, and the like could hardly be classified as 'dull'.

She thought she was rather useless in all those settings. It was her bodyguards that completed all the messy, blood-splattering work while she ran or hid, often with someone in tow. It was very rarely that she would ever join in the fighting, preferring to aim an object at people's heads rather than face to face. It would have been just fine to think of their roles that _simply_; but it wasn't fine. Not to her. She didn't want to admit it, but she was often exasperated with running.

Rarely did she ever make a stand, or even had a chance to do so.

It pained her to think about such things on the nights when she could do nothing but stargaze through the obscenely immense cracks in the ceilings of derelict shacks. She was not sure of her worth, not sure of her life. She was only fifteen, how could she be sure of _anything_? She pretended the stars were events in her life, and she connected them accordingly, purposely jumbling the order to fit her own mixed, unsolved puzzle.

Two extra pieces by the names of Jin and Mugen abruptly included themselves to her puzzle. They didn't fit. Mugen was too unpredictable, always morphing into irregular shapes, never abiding by what she wanted. Jin was too broad, a piece that was simply much too large and sturdy to fit neatly with hers, and just when his edges seemed to flow in perfectly, they shifted, and became too sharp or too rugged.

Her own pieces were too weak and soft, fragile as rice paper. They were delicate, the slightest offset in motion could knock them out of their places. Her journey added fresher, recent pieces to her never-ending puzzle, but strangely, they fit right into place and didn't budge from their designated locations. She knew exactly where they were.

Half the time, she didn't even know where Mugen strayed off to, and Jin would wander away and back, completing whatever his tasks first, and then returning.

Her weakness was frustrating. She didn't approve of people treating her like a breakable porcelain doll. Perhaps that was why she was so fond of her rough companions. They didn't treat her like a thin sheet of glass. They saw her supposed fragility as a persistent annoyance, the type that wasn't as annoying as first thought to be.

Oddly, the men were there whenever she was in need of their aid. They were always there for her, whether it was intentional or not. The two had attempted to leave her several times, but some unknown force always shoved them together again, refusing to allow them to escape their invisible bonds. It was like trying to break through an elastic band; the resulting affect would be bouncing back and slamming into each other, which was similar to what fate had been doing to them.

It was this knowledge that comforted her, the belief that they were bound by fate to complete their task. Whether that task was to find her sunflower samurai or another, it didn't matter. What did matter was the present, and the present--

"Hey! What, are you going to stand there kicking the dirt all day? Let's go!"

The impatient baritone sliding from Mugen's direction dammed her thoughts. She stared at Mugen and Jin in turn and suddenly quirked her lips into the smallest of smiles. To this, Mugen raised an eyebrow whilst Jin remained impassive. Each turned on the heel of their sandals and continued along the path, satisfied that they had Fuu's mind back down in Japan.

Trailing behind the two bickering men with the small smile still lingering on her lips, she decided she could live with two stubborn, irregular pieces. After all, without them, she would never be able to define her own pieces. She would never be complete.

And she wouldn't have it any other way.


End file.
